A place where I'll post up some thoughts and ideas - especially on literature in education, children's literature in general, poetry, reading, writing, teaching and thoughts on current affairs.

Sunday, 20 March 2016

DfE can't and doesn't stick to its own rules on 'errors' in language

In the letter that has gone out from the DfE regarding the Key Stage 1 tests, there's a 'typo' (a slip that someone hasn't noticed). It says 'They encouraging..'It's a slip.In these Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar tests for KS1 and KS2 there is no such thing as a 'slip'. There is right or wrong. Pass or fail. That's what they're doing to children. Telling them that there is no such thing as an error. We all make errors. We all make slips. The DfE makes slips. We live with them.But not children. They're not allowed to make slips. They're not allowed to make errors. It's OK, apparently, to pretend to them that 'we' don't make slips and errors. Or that many of the things the DfE calls an error isn't an error anyway. It's just usage. It's how we speak and write.

(Update: someone's told me that there's also a full stop 'missing' after the word 'systems', as well. Another typo. The kind of thing we tolerate when we write to each other but we're not allowed to tolerate when children do it.)